Max Verstappen responds to Nico Rosberg's call for the Red Bull driver to be black flagged

Red Bull driver Max Verstappen gave a straight answer while responding to ex-F1 world champion Nico Rosberg's call for the former to be black flagged from the 2025 Spanish GP. The Dutch driver found himself embroiled in controversy over his actions in the final few laps in Barcelona on the weekend when he rammed into the side of Mercedes driver George Russell while seemingly giving P4 to the British driver.

The 27-year-old was frustrated by his team's call to relinquish control of his people to Russell, as they believed it would avoid the former being penalized by the FIA stewards. Verstappen did not agree with the decision and voiced his frustrations on the radio and later rammed into Russell to express his feelings.

On the Sky Sports live broadcast, Nico Rosberg was not pleased by Max Verstappen's actions and said:

“He needs to get black flagged. He just crashed into Russell on purpose just to prove a point. That was horrible. That did not look good. That’s bad, bad, bad. That is seriously bad."

"He just rams him, full on. You need to black flag that. There’s no other way. But Max was in the right in the first instance and then the team went against Max and they caused him to boil over.”

When speaking de Telegraaf, Max Verstappen was asked about Rosberg's comments about him, to which he simply replied:

“Everyone is entitled to their opinion."

Owing to the 10-second penalty, Verstappen dropped down to P10 in the race and now sits 49 points behind Oscar Piastri.

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Red Bull team boss comments on Max Verstappen's actions in Spain

Red Bull team principal Christian Horner stated that he had not gotten a chance to speak with Max Verstappen following his head loss moment in the Spanish GP.

Speaking with F1.com, the 51-year-old said of the incident:

“I haven’t had a chance to speak to Max from his side, but obviously the stewards deemed that he caused a collision and got 10 seconds and some penalty points, unfortunately. It obviously was very frustrating, because it leaves us with one point [10th place] out of the afternoon, what should have been an easy podium.”

Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff was also perplexed by the Red Bull driver's move and added:

“I mean, if it was road rage, which I can’t imagine, because it was too obvious, then it’s not good. But the thing is, I don’t know what he aimed for."

Despite making an additional pitstop, the Dutchman was on the back of the McLaren duo at the restart but failed to challenge them as he had fitted the new hard tires and had faced warm-up issues on them. Max Verstappen scored 38 points from the European Triple Header, which included an excellent race win in Imola.